


how cruel, how profoundly tender

by average_lasagna



Series: Merlin fics [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Evil Morgana (Merlin), F/M, Fights, Lovers To Enemies, POV Merlin (Merlin), This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/average_lasagna/pseuds/average_lasagna
Summary: “You’re exactly the same, do you realize that? You love to distance yourself from him, but you are just like your father.”
Relationships: Merlin/Morgana (Merlin)
Series: Merlin fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598401
Comments: 15
Kudos: 49





	how cruel, how profoundly tender

**Author's Note:**

> title from Louise Glück

“You’re exactly the same, do you realize that? You love to distance yourself from him, but you are _just_ like your father.”

With a well-placed spell, she slams him backward; there’s a second where he can’t tell if the sickening crack he hears came from the tree he crashed into or his own body. “I am _nothing_ like Uther!” Morgana cries out, the sound pitiful and half-desperate. “He’s a monster!”

“Do you keep track of everyone you kill? I know he didn’t. There were always too many.”

He hates how attuned he still is to her magic. As he rolls to the side he can feel it hissing through the air, only narrowly missing him. Another tree is destroyed. He’s slower in this form, unused to the creaking of his old bones, but she’s sloppy. She is terrified of Emrys, of their destiny, and he can use that terror to his advantage. He has to.

He forces a wall of magic forward, hitting her square in the chest and sending her flying. He tells himself it’s alright. He isn’t grimacing at her cry, and he isn’t acknowledging that that isn’t true. 

When she pushes herself up, one hand is pressed firmly against her side. There is rage in her eyes. She is determined and deranged, and Merlin's heart aches.

“I'm fighting for magic! He killed our people, destroyed our history! You know you should be fighting for _me_!”

Merlin knows a lot of things. He knows she loved the sound of the forest in the mornings. He knows she liked to braid her hair after baths, but she loved it even more when he did it for her. He knows how brightly she had grinned when he tentatively pressed his lips against her own.

But he isn’t an idiot.

He knows she would kill Arthur and Gwen immediately if given the chance, and she would do so with glee. He knows they all played a part in twisting her into the woman who stands before him, stained and hurt and beaten. He knows of good and evil, of destiny, and she does as well, but she is scared of him, and she will do whatever she must to kill Emrys. He is well-aware that she isn’t the Morgana he knew, the one he loved. 

Knowing doesn’t stop the aching, though.

“I fight for Arthur. I fight for Albion. You have already shown that the minute you gain any power, you will abuse it. You will slaughter the people of Camelot, just as your father did!”

He registers the smell of lightning as he raises his arms. Morgana stands across from him, so broken, so defiant. For a moment, he sees Nimueh. His clouds flock to them and reach for her, another victim of Uther’s, another enemy of Merlin’s. Someone who, in another life, he could have happily known.

The clouds come for them now. Morgana looks up, horror dawning on her face as she sees them, feels Emrys’ storm brewing around them. She doesn’t move. 

In another life, Morgana meets the same end as Nimueh, because Merlin is kind. This is not that life.

As the clouds dissipate, a dizzying wave of power leaves him. Instinctively, it seeks her out, and it finds her, receiving a pained cry as she falls to her knees, half-paralyzed. 

He walks toward her, slowly. “The world has twisted your grief into something horrid.” She bares her teeth at him. “This isn’t holy. This isn’t righteous.”

“You’re foolish and arrogant. You know _nothing_.”

He knows what he set out to do.

“You had a life in Camelot. You had a family.”

“I had a prison, and people who left me to rot the minute they saw my abilities. There is no place for magic, no home for us in Camelot until Arthur is dead.”

“He loved you! They all loved you!” Even as the sight of him hurts her, he is thankful for this form. It hides the way his true voice would waver, would crack. 

_I loved you._

It’s too much for him, seeing her, like this. She’s warped beyond his recognition, and yet he aches. He needs to calm himself before he does something drastic.

“I’m going to eat your tongue,” she sneers. “I’m going to tear you apart and make sure you live through it. I’m going to _win_ , you horrible old bastard.”

That should make it easier on him, shouldn’t it? He knows what he set out to do. He already has the spell to do it, something quiet but efficient, something so simple that would put a stop to all the fighting. This is how every story ends, with good prevailing, the hero defeating the villain. Arthur unites Albion, magic returns, Emrys kills Morgana.

But Merlin isn’t Emrys. He still has time. Moving closer, he whispers something softer, a spell that has her slumping forward into his waiting arms, sleeping but still painfully alive.

The story has to end one day. There is too much blood between the two of them for it to go on; it can never be anything other than exhaustingly cruel. Maybe that’s what he is, to allow her to live, to allow it to continue.

As he carries her limp body to her hovel, his figure starts to change. The strength returns to his arms; the youth returns to his face. If she saw him like this, if she recognized him, would she hesitate? Would apprehension flicker in her eye? If only for a moment, would she grieve for him in the way he constantly does for her?

Is he so desperate as to believe that would ever be enough?

One day, he will kill her, and he will hate her, and he will be the hero, and the story will end. He presses a kiss to her forehead, chaste and forgettable, and knows that it isn’t that day.

He closes the door gently behind him and hopes she sleeps well.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr: rusty-pulley-stars  
> my Merlin blog: anti-uther-rights


End file.
